Today was all about shopping. Hima has quite a lot of errands that need to be done in advance of the wedding, and much of it is/was shopping. So off to Bordoli, we went (with six people in a five seater vehicle… seems to be a trend for this trip!). This is where Hima actually grew up… we were able to see her old building and meet a lot of her old friends and family that still live there.
After stocking up on jewelry, we headed over to a dress shop, because while I thought I had all the clothes I needed, it turns out that I need one more for another wedding that we’ve been invited to. I know that it’s ‘wedding season’ right now, but it’s just crazy how many we’ve driven by and/or seen being setup. Even yesterday we were invited to a third wedding but with all the running we had to do, we declined (or rather Hima declined for all of us). In reality, I was kind of glad, because I can’t imagine having gone to a wedding yesterday after the travel day we had.
Lunch was at a local restaurant (however I spoke too soon yesterday, because this one made Kevin sick 🙁 ). To get back to the shopping we had to cross the street. Remember the ‘no fear’ thing? Yeah, well we had to cross with all the drivers that have no fear. We all held hands to make a four person chain and just went for it. We may or may not have been honked at repeatedly. Speaking of honking, I’m not sure that you can even imagine how much honking happens every single second here…
The other new experience is having gone to a bigger village, we had many, many people including children begging for money. It’s always really sad to see children on the streets, especially when you can’t save everyone. We did give some of them some Rupees, but we also gave some food. I always prefer giving food in these situations, so that I know the person/child gets a meal rather than potentially the money being taken from them. We had a bunch of leftovers from lunch that we packaged up and gave it to one little boy, and I had numerous other little boys come up that I gave Jolly Ranchers too. I had a set of boys that walked by a second time, and I could smell the blue raspberry candy. Small things are important too, so even if you can’t financially help someone, there is always someway that you can whether it be food or time or any other resource.
We spent a good 8 hours running around, and we ready to head back to the house (especially with Kevin not feeling good at all).
Home…. smothered in bug spray since the mosquitos are rough. Kevin woke up this morning with his feet covered in bites. Thankfully I only have a few so far (good thing we have been taking our malaria meds).
Now it’s off to bed. So we can go back to Surat tomorrow for some more errands.
Didn’t take hardly any pictures today…
